TenCate Advanced Composites and BASF have entered into a strategic alliance to cooperate on the development, production and commercialization of thermoplastic composite materials suitable for high-volume vehicle production.

The goal of this partnership is to offer car manufacturers custom-engineered solutions for high-performance composite structures, which enable this industry to further reduce weight and carbon dioxide emission. The growing need of the automotive industry for composite materials used in mass production calls for a rapid development of materials and manufacturing processes.

TenCate Advanced Composites has a leading market position in continuous fiber reinforced thermoplastic composites with the TenCate Cetex product portfolio, currently mainly used for aircraft structures and interiors such as the Airbus A380, A350 and Boeing 787. In this strategic alliance, BASF will contribute its comprehensive know-how in the production and formulation of thermoplastic resins in order to develop special variants of its materials product lines. TenCate Advanced Composites joins in with their expertise in composite manufacturing.

“The next major advance in lightweight automotive constructions will not be possible without a dramatic reduction in processing costs. This can be accomplished by using continuous fiber reinforced thermoplastic composites. The breakthrough for composites to mass production, however, has not yet been made. By working together with TenCate, we intend to jointly achieve this breakthrough”, explains Melanie Maas-Brunner, successor to Willy Hoven-Nievelstein and new head of the Engineering Plastics Europe business unit of BASF in Germany.

Compared to metal parts, fiber reinforced plastic composites can be 30 to 50 % lighter. Thermoplastic composites help car manufacturers economize on the fuel consumption of their vehicles and enable the industry to save costs and meet CO2 targets.